craft jewellery from Northumberland

spring sowing

Spring is really gathering pace here in Grahy, although we’re still keeping a close eye on the weather forecast – we had snow in April last year. It seems to be set fair for the next couple of weeks though, so we decided to sow some flower seeds today.

We bought a lovely seed collection from Higgledy Garden last September. We tried an autumn sowing, but didn’t have much success, probably because of the big swings in temperature that we experience here. The seeds did germinate, but a lot died off over the course of the winter. Here are the brave survivors. I’m hoping that some sort of Darwinian process of natural selection has occurred, and that these will be super-plants.

So, here’s what we sowed this morning, including foxgloves, corncockle, cornflowers, feverfew, nigella and scabiosa. Aren’t the packets beautiful?

We’ve put this first lot into pots in our recently acquired Lidl plastic greenhouse, just until the danger of frosts has passed. I think they look fairly impressive. Even better if and when they begin to germinate – I’ll keep you posted on their progress.

We’ll direct sow some more in May, so we should have an abundant floral display this summer. Once we’ve prepared the beds, that is, which is another job on our long to-do list. I have found time to make some jewellery too, but I’ll tell you about that another time…